Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Meeting and vintage teacup candle making – Saturday 27th October

Hello! We’re back, to tell
you all about our second meeting, and what fun we had with a few old saucepans
and half a ton of wax (!). As promised, we kicked off proceedings with more of
a formal meeting this time. We were joined by Helena Harrington, the Chairman of our local WI
Federation, and Edith Cheesbrough, the WI representative who’s been guiding us through the membership process. Helena kindly talked us through
a brief history of the Women’s Institute, what the WI is all about now, and
also what our members will gain access to when they join. Helena and Edith then
popped to the kitchen for a cuppa, whilst we had a chat as a group about the
things that are most important for us to agree right now, as a newbie WI
branch:

What’s our name?

What will we do?

What about lunch?! (you may scoff – sorry about the pun – but our meetings start on Saturdays at 11am,
so yes we do have to talk about lunch!)

The founding committee
members have already been using a working title for our group, and this was our
chance to unveil it:

Darling Roses WI(ta da!)

The eagle-eyed among you
will have noticed it’s also the title of this site! We had a chat about the
merits of going with a more ‘whimsical’ name (such as Darling Roses) or the
more traditional route of naming the branch after the area we meet in (for us, that's Moortown in Leeds), and the
consensus in the group was that something a bit more expressive and unique will
suit us much better. So, to cut a long story short, Darling Roses it is! The few of
us who’ve been living with the name for a little while, whilst working on
setting up this group, have grown to love it and we’re sure you all will too.
It does make us sound quite lovely, if you think about it… (and we’re sure we
can live up to that, come on!)

We also talked about our
ideas for future workshops, fundraising and campaigning, which we’ll
post more about as we develop our ideas and agree firm plans. With the formalities out of
the way, we were able to confirm to Helena and Edith our name and our firm
intention of being a WI branch, which means… we will be inaugurated officially
at our next meeting on November 24th! Phew. Again, look out for more on this
next meeting in a post coming soon – along with details of the crafty, creative
workshop that will follow the meeting, making Christmas wreaths.

But
let’s not forget our candle making. It was a nice choice as our first proper
workshop, something that was very simple and cost-effective to arrange, easy
for everyone to take part in, and we all got to take home some nice gifts
(possibly for ourselves!) that we were very pleased with…

These two got all fancy with some bows (the rest of us who didn't think of that were a tad jealous!)

So, there you have it, and a lovely time was had by all. Next month we'll be creating some Christmas cheer, learning how to make beautiful Christmas wreaths using greenery or fabrics. We'll keep you posted on all the details.

Welcome

Hello! The Darling Roses is a friendly, fast-growing Women's Institute which first opened its doors in 2012 in Moortown, Leeds - although our members are from all over the city. As far as we know, we are the only WI which meets at weekends. Please have a look around our site, and if you need to get in touchplease email debbie@darlingroseswi.orgor andrea@darlingroseswi.org